Like Clockwork
by WhiteFerrets
Summary: Dave watches him. The guy with the slick confidence and arrogant strut, with his coiffed hair and charming smirk — Dave watches him. Smythofsky, angst.


**A/N: A meercub on tumblr gave me a really simple prompt of "smythofsky, jealousy" and the poor soul got four-thousand words of angst vomited at them.**

**Rating: PG-13  
****Warning: Angst  
****Word Count: 4000  
Characters: Dave Karofsky/Sebastian Smythe**

**Summary: Dave watches him. The guy with the slick confidence and arrogant strut, with his coiffed hair and charming smirk — Dave watches him.**

* * *

Dave watches him. The guy with the slick confidence and arrogant strut, with his coiffed hair and charming smirk — Dave watches him. It starts during the summer before his senior year, when he first finds Scandals. He sees him approaching guys, pulling them onto the dancefloor, kissing them, leading them out by the hand. Every night, he takes someone else home. He's so proud of it, so at home in his body and comfortable with his sexuality, that Dave can't help but notice.

It's a gay bar, of course people are comfortable while they're there, but there's something about this guy that catches his attention, something different that Dave can't put his finger on.

So he watches. He sits at the bar with his beer in his hand, keeping an eye on this stranger until he leaves with another guy on his arm. At first, he doesn't even realise he's doing it, watching so persistently. His eyes wander without his acknowledgement and the next thing he knows, he's been staring for ten minutes.

It doesn't take long before Dave has the guy's schedule memorised. He comes into Scandals at nine-thirty every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Like clockwork. Dave finds himself falling in sync with his pattern, showing up half an hour earlier on those three specific days, just to watch the guy walk through the door and buy himself a drink.

He always leans against the bar with his drink of choice in hand, eyes roaming the dimly lit room for his next victim. Once he's decided, he makes his way over to the guy he's pursuing, saying things that Dave can never hear with a smile that would make even the Virgin Mary drop to her knees before him. He'll buy them drinks, whisper in their ears, slide his hand up their arms. Before long, the guy has his prey wrapped around his finger, dancing against him to whichever annoying dubstep song is playing through the tinny speakers of the jukebox.

And then they leave, a flurry of open-mouthed kisses and inappropriate groping as they stumble their way out of Scandals. Like clockwork.

At first, Dave watches out of curiosity. He doesn't understand how this guy does it, how he manages to find someone new every single night he's there. Dave tries to understand, he tries to work out his method, but he just can't get it. And then the jealousy starts. The small pit of heat and anger and disgust that bubbles in the pit of his stomach every time Dave watches the stranger, the inexplicable way his insides twists themselves into knots whenever the guy takes someone else home.

Who does he think he is? Parading around and sleeping with guys mindlessly, giving anyone and everyone his seal of approval like it's something of worth? So he has a pretty face and a lithe body, _so what_? That doesn't make him any more desirable or fuck-worthy than any other guy in the bar. Dave could do what that guy does, right? It's not like he's unattractive exactly.

But Dave never tries, because he knows damn well that he can't do what the stranger with the coiffed hair does. So he sits and he watches, wanting to punch something every time the stranger approaches someone. It's worse when someone approaches the guy first, the jealousy stronger and more vicious. It makes him grip his beer bottle and clench his jaw, irritated. What do people see in him? What makes him so much better than everyone else?

It continues like this for months, just Dave at the bar, watching the stranger with his stupid smirk and annoying strut. Like clockwork. The guy catches him sometimes, looks up and meets Dave's eye. He always grins, sometimes winking playfully in a way that has Dave tightening his grip on the beer bottle. Then he'll go back to his partner for the night, not sparing Dave a second glance. Even after all this time, Dave still isn't sure if the way he flaunts his ass after catching Dave staring is intentional or not.

It's an average Friday night when things change. He's sitting in his usual spot, nursing a beer and glancing over his shoulder subtly. The guy is already on the dancefloor, collar popped arrogantly as he dances with someone that looks all too familiar. Dave can't work out who it is, not in the dim lighting of the club, but there's something about the height and the hair gel that triggers something in Dave's memory.

The stranger's dance partner looks up after a while, at someone further down the bar, and Dave follows his gaze curiously. He's undeniably surprised when he sees Kurt, but that's when it clicks. The guy is his boyfriend, from that prep school a few towns over. He watches the three of them for a few minutes before working up the nerve to slink over to Kurt.

"Better watch your boyfriend," he says.

Talking to Kurt again is nice, he decides. Talking to Kurt like civil human beings, almost like_friends_, is definitely something he wouldn't mind getting used to. But Kurt is moving away before long, strutting onto the dancefloor and cutting into the dance between Blaine and the stranger. Dave shuffles back to his old seat, finding comfort in the corner of the bar, and watches silently.

The next morning, Dave lets his curiosity get the best of him and he sends Kurt a text before he can give himself the chance to hesitate.

(7:35)  
**You know the guy that was dancing with your boyfriend last night?**

(7:38)  
_Unfortunately, yes._

(7:39)  
**What's his name?**

(7:41)  
_Oh god, not you too._

(7:42)  
**What?**

(7:43)  
_You like him._

(7:43)  
**WTF? No.**  
(7:45)  
**I just see him at Scandals a lot.**

(7:46)  
_When you say you 'see' him …?_

(7:47)  
***No.***  
(7:47)  
**Just answer my question.**

(7:49)  
_Sebastian. His name is Sebastian. _  
(7:50)  
_And, David?_

(7:51)  
**Yeah?**

(7:52)  
_Say no if he ever approaches you._  
(7:53)  
_I don't even want to think about the amount of STDs he must have._

(7:54)  
**I'll keep it in mind. Thanks. **

_Sebastian._ Dave spends the entire day with that name in his head, spinning round and round in an endless cycle. _Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebastian_. That night, he goes to Scandals like normal, half an hour before Sebastian is due to arrive.

And then _Sebastian_ is there, entering the club confidently. _Sebastian_ orders a drink,_Sebastian_ finds a guy, _Sebastian_ dances and sways and kisses and thrusts. Like clockwork,_ Sebastian_ does what he always does, every single night he's there. That familiar feeling of envy simmers in Dave's stomach, the envy he feels for _Sebastian_.

Everything is exactly like it's always been but it feels so different, being able to put a name to that stupid face. He's not really a stranger anymore, no longer just some guy with coiffed hair and an annoying smirk. He's _Sebastian_. _Sebastian_ with the popped collars and lean figure, _Sebastian_ with the seemingly irresistible charms and effortless movements,_Sebastian_ with the endless confidence and winning smiles.

_Sebastian_.

Dave's routine isn't disrupted for while. He waits, he watches, he stays. Neither of them approach one another, though Sebastian continues to catch him staring sometimes. He winks, he smirks, he flaunts. And then he goes back to dancing with whichever guy he's selected for the night. Like clockwork.

Sebastian does the same thing over and over, every night without fail, and nothing changes.

Nothing, that is, except for the jealousy. It grows over time, gnaws at Dave's insides until he's fit to burst, and it's at the start of the new year when he finally cracks.

He watches Sebastian enter the club, clenches his teeth as Sebastian orders a drink, and follows him with his eyes as Sebastian makes his way over to the jukebox. Dave barely has time to think about what he's doing before he's moving across the club and lingering behind Sebastian.

He doesn't know what he wants to say or what he's trying to achieve by approaching him, but he's standing there and there's no way Sebastian doesn't know that someone's behind him. So he leans forward, lingering over Sebastian's shoulder.

"So, how do you get a guy to like you?" is the first thing that comes out of his mouth. It sounds pathetic and desperate but he's said it and that's that.

Sebastian glances over his shoulder briefly, barely sparing Dave a second glance before scoffing.

"You, get a guy? Please."

The words cut Dave like a knife and he pulls back, frowning.

"Why? What's wrong with me?" he demands.

Even as Sebastian keeps his back to Dave and focuses on the jukebox, Dave can see the way the corner of his mouth curls up into a smug smirk.

"First off, you are about a hundred pounds overweight. Quit waxing your eyebrows, you look like Liberace. In fact —" Sebastian stands up straight and turns to him, eyes sparkling with amusement as he pats him on the shoulder. "Just stay in the closet, buddy."

Sebastian walks away before Dave can respond, wrapping his arm around a blond guy's waist and pulling him out onto the dancefloor. In the back of Dave's mind, he can only assume that they know one another, because the guy smiles and curls his arms around Sebastian's shoulders instantly. They begin to grind to the song Sebastian chose and Dave just stands there, the jealousy and anger and hurt yet to hit him.

Sebastian leans in close to whisper in the guy's ear, making eye contact with Dave as he did so. He smirks viciously, arching an eyebrow as if daring Dave to doubt the things he'd said to him. That's when the numb feeling disappears and everything hits him at once.

It hurts.

It hurts more than Dave can begin to comprehend. It makes him sick to his stomach and brings the sharp sting of tears to his eyes. Scandals is suddenly too loud, too crowded, too suffocating. He still has his beer in his hand as he makes his way outside, fist clenched around the neck of the bottle as he shakes with anger and sets his jaw.

He wants to punch, he wants to scream, he wants to make someone else feel as bad as him. He wants to make Sebastian feel the bitter sting of rejection for once.

It's not like Dave was even asking Sebastian out or anything. It had been an innocent question with mostly innocent intentions, but there's no doubt in Dave's mind that Sebastian's response was anything other than a rejection. All the guys that Sebastian had selected, all the guys that had earned Sebastian's approval, there's always been such a wide variety and Dave has never been able to work out any similarities.

Now, though, as he throws the beer bottle and watches the shards scatter across the ground, he knows. Every single one of those guys have one thing in common: they're not Dave. They don't look like Dave, they don't walk like Dave, they don't dance like Dave. They're not Dave and they never will be Dave.

And Dave will never be like them.

He'll never be the guy that people approach in bars, all suggestive and flirtatious as they ask to buy him a beer or offer their hand with a gesture to the dancefloor. He'll never be the guy that people want to take home for the night, or even take into the bathroom for a quickie.

Realisation hits Dave like a ton of bricks. Ever since day one, it's never been Sebastian that causes the envy in his stomach. It's been the guys he goes after, the ones he dances with and kisses and takes home to fuck. All along, it's been the faceless guys that cause all the jealousy. It's been his desire to be liked and to be appreciated, not to have the confidence to do the appreciating.

Dave doesn't know how to process that information and he ends up falling asleep in the back of his car at three in the morning, still confused and bitter.

He tries to kill himself three weeks later.

When he finds out that the Dalton Academy Warblers dedicated their set list to him and got the audience to donate to a LGBTQ charity in his honour, Dave doesn't understand why a bunch of strangers would do such a thing. His confusion keeps him up at night, racking his brains to work it out, but he only draws a blank.

Then he receives an email, from one . He doesn't know what he's expecting, but when he opens the attachment on the email and sees Sebastian on stage in a private school blazer, he's so inexplicably angry that he only makes it half way through the second song before he slams the laptop shut.

He doesn't have the right to do that. He doesn't have the right to get up on stage and dedicate a performance to Dave after so cheerfully ripping him apart just a matter of weeks ago. It's like the bastard is mocking him or something, and Dave hates him for it.

When he calms down, it occurs to him that maybe Sebastian did it out of guilt. Maybe he feels bad for being so blunt and arrogant, and for not considering Dave's feelings before he spoke. But Dave doesn't want to get his hopes up so he lets himself get bitter again.

The first thing Dave does when he gets out of hospital is start over. He transfers to a school twenty minutes away from Lima. He gets a new phone number and makes new online accounts. He puts as much distance between the bullies and himself as he can, and it feels good to start fresh.

So when he checks his new email account two weeks later to see a a new message in his inbox from again, it takes Dave a minute to really acknowledge what that means. He can't work out how Sebastian got his new email address, but that's the least of his worries as his finger hovers over the delete button.

Two and a half months pass until Dave works up the nerve to go back to Scandals.

Sebastian's been sending him an email once a week, an audio file of him singing attached to every single one. He never replies and deletes the emails as soon as the attachment has downloaded, but he has a playlist on his iPod full of those songs.

Some of them start with introductions — _"Hey Dave, it's Sebastian again. I don't know if you know this song, but here it goes."_ — and in others he just sings right off the bat. Dave likes his voice, he appreciates the gesture, but he's still bitter and the last thing he wants is to be around Sebastian.

So when he returns to Scandals, he goes on a Monday and shows up at ten forty-five. It's everything he never knew he needed and he loves every second of it, easily working his way back into the club and re-acquainting himself with the regulars. Sebastian isn't there and that makes it even better.

He quickly falls into a routine, going to Scandals every Monday and Thursday evening. He drinks, he dances, he talks. _Like clockwork_, he sometimes thinks with a wry smile. For the first time in too long, he has real friends.

Sebastian still sends him emails that he reads but doesn't respond to and his _'Sebastian'_playlist on his iPod continues to expand. But it's okay, he tells himself. It is.

Seven weeks down the line and he's just starting to believe it when Sebastian ambushes him. It's a Thursday, so when Dave feels a warm hand on his shoulder and a presence by his side, he's too surprised to feign nonchalance.

"… Sebastian?"

"Hey, big boy," Sebastian purrs with a sly smile on his face. "I haven't seen you around lately. It's a good thing I can talk Hummel into telling me anything, huh? Did you get my emails?"

"Every last one," Dave replies, staring pointedly at his beer bottle.

Sebastian runs his hand over Dave's shoulder and down his arm to grip his bicep, leaning in slightly. "You know, I didn't mean what I said that night," he murmurs, voice low and sickly sweet. "You're actually hot. Like,_ really_ hot. I don't usually go for bears, but there's the occasional exception."

Dave swallows thickly and licks his dry lips, and when he looks over at Sebastian, he almost chokes when he sees the boy's gaze set firmly on his mouth. He looks away again instantly.

"How about you let me buy you a drink, huh? We could … talk."

Dave's tempted to say yes, to give in to everything he's wanted since he first started watching Sebastian, but everything he felt that night when Sebastian shot him down hits him all at once. All he can think about is how badly he wanted Sebastian to be rejected, and before he can think twice, he's shaking his head.

"I already have a drink," he replies.

But Sebastian just smiles and eases the beer bottle out of Dave's hand, sliding it along the bar until it's behind him. He leans over until Dave makes eye contact.

"How about you let me buy you a drink?" he repeats, resting his chin on his hand with his elbow on the bar.

"How about you give me my beer back?"

"Not a drink? I can deal with that … how about a dance, then?"

He squeezes Dave's bicep and gives him that charming smirk, but Dave just brushes his hand off.

"I don't want to dance with you, dude."

Sebastian's face falls slightly. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just don't want to dance with you."

"You seemed pretty interested before …" He lets the sentence hang, the unsaid words a reminder that Sebastian knows what Dave tried to do.

"There's a difference between curiosity and interest," Dave retorts, snatching his beer back and downing it in one go.

"So that's it?" Sebastian asks, rubbing his hand against Dave's knee. "Not even one drink, one dance?"

"That's it," Dave replies. "See you around, man."

With that, he stands and leaves before Sebastian can change his mind. He doesn't know if Sebastian's been affected by his rejection, and part of him doesn't want to. He feels bad. After such a long time, he finally gets what he's been after, and he's selfish enough to take it for granted?

He pushes away the guilt before it eats him alive, forcing himself to believe that he did the right thing. Still, there's a part of him that won't stop nagging about it, a part of him that can't really get over it. Sebastian_ approached_ him. He came into Scandals on a different night at a different time to his usual schedule, just to approach Dave and ask him for a dance.

The realisation makes Dave feel special and all the more awful simultaneously.

Sebastian must hate him now, because no one _ever_ rejects him. He's meant to be irresistible and Dave has thrown that back in his face with his middle finger in the air. He doesn't know why he cares so much about what Sebastian thinks of him but it keeps him up at night for the rest of the week.

And then Sebastian emails him on Tuesday. At first, Dave is terrified, convinced that it's going to be angry and resentful. Instead, he finds five paragraphs of apology and another audio attachment for him to download. Dave reads the email as he waits for the file to download, quickly opening it in iTunes once it's completed.

He holds his breath as Sebastian's voice fills his ears, the soft tinkle of piano keys in the background. He recognises the song instantly, but the way Sebastian sings it sends shivers down his spine and puts a lump in his throat like the original has never been able to do.

As he listens, he re-reads the email and chews his lower lip anxiously. The final two paragraphs stand out the most and he reads them over and over until they're all but burned into his retinas.

_I always noticed you, you know. You watched me every night we were there and that'd probably creep most guys out, but I kind of liked it. It was like we had some kind of secret communication going on, like a twisted version of an inside joke. Does that sound weird? Probably. When I heard what you did … it got to me. I kept thinking about the things I said to you, how I probably made everything ten times worse than they already were. I didn't know. How could I? You were just a guy in a bar. I didn't even know your name._

_But you've always been more than just a guy in a bar. I miss you watching me, and I miss knowing that you'll be sitting in your corner with a beer whenever I go to Scandals. It's not the same without you there. But I'm not going to bother you again. I'll send you songs until you tell me to stop, but otherwise I'll leave you alone. I won't go to Scandals when I know you're there, I won't bother Hummel for information about you, I won't do anything. I'll leave you be. __You know, it's funny. We never even had a proper hello and this feels too much like a goodbye …_

"In another life, I would make you stay, so I don't have to say you were the one that got away," Sebastian sings softly into Dave's ears. "The one that got away, mmm. The one that got away."

Dave sits in front of his laptop in silence for several minutes, mind reeling. Then he adds the song to his Sebastian playlist and deletes the email without replying.

A week later, he receives another email with yet another audio attachment. And the next Monday, he receives another. Then another, and another, every single Monday. Like clockwork. The songs change every time, from pop to indie to oldies' to alternative rock, but they're always accompanied by the soft melody of a piano in the background. In the emails, he tells stories. Stories about Scandals and Dalton and Paris, stories about his past and stories about his future.

Months pass and Dave doesn't reply, not once, not ever, but he saves each song and listens to them constantly.

Sometimes he wonders what would've happened if he made different decisions, if he never started watching Sebastian or if he said yes when Sebastian asked him for a dance, but what's done is done and he knows it'll never change. Sometimes he realises that he knows so much about Sebastian and Sebastian doesn't really know anything about him in return, sometimes he considers replying to Sebastian's emails with stories of his own, but he doesn't.

He begins to return to Scandals on Sebastian's days, at his usual time, and he never misses the glint in Sebastian's eye when he spots him at the bar. As promised though, he never approaches him. The jealousy still bubbles in Dave's stomach when he notices Sebastian dancing with other guys, but he doesn't let himself dwell on it like he used to. He simply turns around and sips at his beer, focusing on anything other than Sebastian.

It's difficult, but he learns to stop watching.

He sits at the bar, smiles and waves at Sebastian when he walks in, then turns his back to the rest of the room and doesn't turn around until he's ready to leave. Sebastian smiles and waves back, but otherwise leaves him alone for the night. He still sends him emails once a week, with a story and a song in each one, and Dave still deletes them without responding.

They're not friends, not even acquaintances really, but they have an understanding between them and a strange bond that can't be broken. They're both comfortable with where they stand, refusing to dwell on the what if's and instead focusing on the peaceful reality.

Maybe Dave wanted it to be different once upon a time, maybe Dave wanted more, but he likes it now. They work for all the reasons that they shouldn't, their routine never faltering or collapsing beneath them. It's a lot like clockwork.

* * *

_**FIN.**_  
**Feedback is appreciated. (:**


End file.
